Towards Our Common Digital Future. Flagship Report.

In the report “Towards Our Common Digital Future”, the WBGU makes it clear that sustainability strategies and concepts need to be fundamentally further developed in the age of digitalization. Only if digital change and the Transformation towards Sustainability are synchronized can we succeed in advancing climate and Earth-system protection and in making social progress in human development. Without formative political action, digital change will further accelerate resource and energy consumption, and exacerbate damage to the environment and the climate. It is therefore an urgent political task to create the conditions needed to place digitalization at the service of sustainable development

Rethinking Land in the Anthropocene: from Separation to Integration

Nur wenn sich unser Umgang mit Land grundlegend ändert, können die Klimaschutzziele erreicht, der dramatische Verlust der biologischen Vielfalt abgewendet und das globale Ernährungssystem nachhaltig gestaltet werden. Der WBGU schlägt fünf exemplarische Mehrgewinnstrategien vor, um Konkurrenzen zwischen Nutzungsansprüchen zu überwinden. Diese sollten durch fünf Governance-Strategien vorangetrieben werden, darunter insbesondere die Setzung geeigneter Rahmenbedingungen, eine Neuorientierung der EUPolitik und die Errichtung von Gemeinschaften gleichgesinnter Staaten.Only if there is a fundamental change in the way we manage land can we reach the targets of climate-change mitigation, avert the dramatic loss of biodiversity and make the global food system sustainable. The WBGU proposes five multiple-benefit strategies illustrating ways of overcoming competition between rival claims to the use of land. These should be promoted by five governance strategies, especially by setting suitable framework conditions, reorienting EU policy and establishing alliances of like-minded states

Unsere gemeinsame digitale Zukunft

Das Gutachten „Unsere gemeinsame digitale Zukunft“ macht deutlich, dass Nachhaltigkeitsstrategien und -konzepte im Zeitalter der Digitalisierung grundlegend weiterentwickelt werden müssen. Nur wenn der digitale Wandel und die Transformation zur Nachhaltigkeit konstruktiv verzahnt werden, kann es gelingen, Klima- und Erdsystemschutz sowie soziale Fortschritte menschlicher Entwicklung voranzubringen. Ohne aktive politische Gestaltung wird der digitale Wandel den Ressourcen- und Energieverbrauch sowie die Schädigung von Umwelt und Klima weiter beschleunigen. Daher ist es eine vordringliche politische Aufgabe, Bedingungen dafür zu schaffen, die Digitalisierung in den Dienst nachhaltiger Entwicklung zu stellen

Middle East - North Africa and the millennium development goals : implications for German development cooperation

          Closed-loop controlled combustion is a promising technique to improve the overall performance of internal combustion engines and Diesel engines in particular. In order for this technique to be implemented some form of feedback from the combustion process is required. The feedback signal is processed and from it combustionrelated parameters are computed. These parameters are then fed to a control process which drives a series of outputs (e.g. injection timing in Diesel engines) to control their values. This paper’s focus lies on the processing and computation that is needed on the feedback signal before this is ready to be fed to the control process as well as on the electronics necessary to support it. A number of feedback alternatives are briefly discussed and for one of them, the in-cylinder pressure sensor, the CA50 (crank angle in which the integrated heat release curve reaches its 50% value) and the IMEP (Indicated Mean Effective Pressure) are identified as two potential control variables. The hardware architecture of a system capable of calculating both of them on-line is proposed and necessary feasibility size and speed considerations are made by implementing critical blocks in VHDL targeting a flash-based Actel ProASIC3 automotive-grade FPGA

Endogenized technological learning in an energy systems model

Technology dynamics is endogenized into a bottom-up energy systems model. Mixed integer programming is used to incorporate into the model the non-convex relation between declining specific investment in energy technologies and overall experience or capacities installed. The initial results achieved with this approach show the importance of early investment in new technology developments. New technologies will not become cheaper irrespective of research, development, and demonstration (RD & D) decisions; they will do so only if determined RD&D policies and investment strategies enhance their development.Technological learning , Energy modeling , Mixed integer programming